


some people fall in love | with the wrong people sometimes

by doyoushipwhoiship



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Boris Loves Theo, Boris Pavlikovsky Goes to New York, Inspired by Music, Love Triangles, Multi, Mutual Pining, kitsey loves tom, theo is engaged to kitsey, theo loves Boris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doyoushipwhoiship/pseuds/doyoushipwhoiship
Summary: Boris shows up at Theo's place with his wedding invitation in hand. Are Theo and Kitsey still getting married? Boris wants answers.
Relationships: Kitsey Barbour/Theodore Decker, Kitsey Barbour/Tom Cable, Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker & Pippa, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 4
Kudos: 119





	some people fall in love | with the wrong people sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Moral of the Story" by Ashe, which inspired this fic.

“The fuck is this?” he said as soon as I opened the door. He was holding a card, edged in gold foil, accompanied by a matching envelope that looked like it had been ripped open with a chainsaw. Before I could say anything, Boris stormed into the apartment and threw the items down on my coffee table. He ignored the line of cocaine there, which I’d been prepared, though not quite ready, to take.

I closed the door and walked over, avoiding his gaze for the moment while I examined the note. It was the invitation to our wedding—Kitsey’s and mine. Shit.

“You’re going to do it, then?”

I didn’t want to lie. I didn’t want to give him an answer because to be honest, I didn’t know if we were still getting married or not. “How often do you check your mail?” I countered instead.

“What?”

“Your mail.” I dropped the card. My fingers felt cold where I’d touched it.

“It depends. I move a lot. It was sent to my new address.”

“Well, Kitsey sent these a while ago. You know, before…” I cut myself off. How did Kitsey even get ahold of Boris’s address?

“But is still planned?”

“What?” I said distractedly.

“The wedding, Potter.”

“Well. Yes. I think so.”

“You don’t know,” he guessed correctly. “Cмешной.” Smeshnoy: _Ridiculous._ “Is hard, I suppose, being straight? Having this family pressure to marry after you have dated so long?”

It was strange for Boris to use labels like this. “Straight,” I parroted.

“Yes. You like girls. You have chosen to like girls.”

The way he said this made me want to punch him. “You know it isn’t black and white like that.”

“No?”

“No.” I didn’t want to talk about this. I mean, I’d never been ready to talk about this, not with Kitsey or anyone, not even with Pippa. “The lines are more blurred for me,” I forced out. “You know that.”

“You want to talk about blurred lines?” Boris swooped down in his long coat and ran his hand across the edge of the table, gathering my coke in his waiting palm. “ _This_ is blurred line!” Before I could stop him, he’d rushed across the apartment to wash my habit down the kitchen sink.

“What the fuck.” I said, following. He leaned against my fridge and gave a grin.

“Is done.”

“I have more.”

“Not right now, you don’t. You need a clear head, Potter. You need to think.” He reached up to tap my temple. “What the fuck are you doing. Do not mistake me. I know your lines are blurred. Mine are, too.” He stared into space. “I know you, and you should not do this thing.”

It struck me how frank of a tone he’d taken. Boris wasn’t one for cutting to the quick; he was a sugar-coater, wrapping up his words in bad Polish humor and his typical silliness before telling you anything he really meant. To hear him tell me frankly, to my face, that I should not marry Kitsey, made me ache.

“Boris…”

“Is fine.” He threw this out the side of his mouth, disgustedly, and I knew it wasn’t.

“What do you think I must think, Potter?” he stabbed, turning to me again. “You are with this girl, yes? You were in love with museum girl for longest time but she gives up on you, thinks, oh this Theo—”

I gulped at the sound of my name in his mouth.

“—he is my friend but he takes too long, is stuck in past, won’t move on. And then this Kitsey!”

“Why do you think I was stuck in the past?” I challenged. “Who do you think I was stuck _on_?”

“All right, she is rich and pretty, but you rich pretty people, all you do is pretend,” Boris spat. “You play game of pretend and act like is other’s fault, is game to see who will give up and take blame. Who will leave first.”

“Kitsey,” I said easily. “It isn’t a contest.”

I thought of Tom, of his dumb slack mouth in that bathroom with the half-smoked cigarette balanced on his lip, which was always split and scabbed due to all the stupid pointless fights he always got into; “Decker,” he’d say, leaning against a stall wall, digging the half-empty pack from the back pocket of his too-tight Levi’s and offering it to me. “You want it?” And I’d refuse, I didn’t need to be cool if I already hung out with a guy who was, that was enough, and it was this routine with Cable that got old so very quickly, but clearly not quickly enough for Kitsey.

“She won’t need to leave,” I added, pushing into Boris’s space, “because she already left.”

Boris squinted, like I wasn’t making sense.

“She was never there.”

“Idiot. You are bloody idiot and everyone sees it but you. You realize?” He shook his head, ran his thin pale fingers through his dark thick curls, and as I watched this my Adam’s apple bobbed up and down again. Breathless laugh.

I wanted to laugh with him, this stupid fucking perfect person, and I didn’t know why I’d ever been friends with a dick like Tom when I could’ve known and loved someone like Boris all along. I knew this train of thought was a dangerous track to take, because after all, wasn’t I contradicting myself, wanting him? I wanted to let go, I wanted to laugh with Boris, not only now but forever: I wanted to sugarcoat, I wanted to lean back and dip my mind in the memories, go back to Vegas to our pool and our Popchyk.

What the fuck was I trying to do with women—I failed my mother as a son, failed Pippa as a friend, failed Kitsey as a partner and failed Mrs. Barbour as her future son-in-law—when this man was here, laughing, looking at me like I actually mattered? I tried to laugh too but it came out as an aborted sob, and god, I was far too close to him, physically and otherwise…I knew this and couldn’t give a shit.

“I hate it when we argue.”

Boris stared at me. “Argue,” he said, lifting a hand to adjust my glasses, even though they hadn’t needed adjusting, “is all we ever do.”

My brow must have furrowed. He sighed and tried to explain.

“Potter, we argue because we don’t like to talk. Is like this, if we stop the arguing and try to have real conversation—you know, like normal people do—then we would…how you say…fix our problem.”

“Our problem?”

“Yes, Potter. Resolve it.”

“Are you talking about what happened when I left for New York?” I didn’t say _when you kissed me_ or _when you told me not to go_.

“You never listen,” he said darkly. “I tell you, is important, and what do you do? Ignore me.”

“I didn’t—”

“You _do_. And one day, you will know how much I care. I am oldest friend, eh? Besides music girl. Pippa.”

My eyes softened. He remembered her name. “Boris.”

“What?”

My eyes weren’t just softening. I’d started to cry. “Boris,” I said again. Whispered it.

“What!” He threw his hands in the air. “Potter, you cry, and you say my name like this, like is secret, and what am I supposed to do?” He smiled as if taking pity on me, and reached to hold my face in his hands. “Oh, Potter. You know we are fine. I will go to your stupid fucking wedding and get very drunk and give long embarrassing speech and then there will be applause and cake and then you will have first dance.”

He dabbed at my face with his sleeve as I sob-laughed, “First dance with you?”

“Yes,” he said, like it was obvious. “I get the first dance with you, while your bride can have hers with the man-whore, you know, the cigarette one. Shall we practice now?”

Satisfied that my face was clean and that I was ready to be cheered up with a dance lesson, Boris unceremoniously shrugged off his coat, letting it drop to the floor, and threw his arm around me. “I will lead,” he said in a not-so-successful attempt at being serious. “Now. You must promise not to step on my toes. These are new Italian shoes. Very expensive.”


End file.
